Personal constructs of nursing practice: a comparative analysis of three groups of Australian nurses

Repertory grid technique was used to compare the personal constructs that three groups of nurses (critical care nurses, gerontology nurses and general nurses) used to characterize effective nursing within their areas of practice. To seek differences in the distribution of constructs across the three groups, the repertory grid data were represented by non-metric multidimensional scaling (MDS) which revealed separation between the critical care nurses and the gerontology nurses with the general nurse distributed between the former. The significance of differences in relative frequencies of personal constructs apparent in the scaling solution was tested and, in some cases, found to be statistically significant. The constructs knowledge base, clinical skills, teaching skills, and achievement orientation characterized critical care nurses, whereas compassionate and empathetic, positive affect, enacts values, and holistic view of care were characteristic of gerontology nurses. The constructs elicited from nurses in general acute care settings showed some similarity to both groups. The implications for professional practice resulting from these observations are discussed. The techniques used in this study provide a new approach to the analysis of personal construct data in the nursing field. The transformation of pairs of linked constructs into a proximity matrix provides an entry point for analytical techniques such as non-metric multidimensional scaling.